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A detailed study carried out for The Independent has found that a swing of 11.5 per cent from Labour voters to the Liberal Democrats could deprive Blair of his overall Commons majority 'but it would be virtually impossible for such defections - at even twice that rate - to let in the Conservatives to form a government'.

John Curtice, the respected psephologist and professor of politics at Strathclyde University carried out the analysis.

If there is a 9 per cent swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats, Labour would still have an overall majority of 48.

With a 15 per cent swing, Labour would still be the largest party in a hung parliament with 50 more seats than the Tories.

"Those figures are based on the Tories doing no better than the 33 per cent share of the vote they won in 2001, which is also in line with their current opinion poll rating."

Even if the Tories improve their showing and win 36 per cent of the votes next Thursday - a three-percentage point rise at Labour's expense - and there were a 9 per cent swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats over and above that, Labour would be the largest party in a hung parliament with 43 seats more than the Tories.

The "Lab- to-Lib Dem" swing would have to be a huge 15 per cent before the Tories became the largest party - but they would be outnumbered by the combined forces of the other two parties.

The study found that the Tories come nowhere near to passing the winning post of 324 seats they would need to form a government.

Mr Blair claimed: "It only takes one in 10 of our voters to drift off to the Liberal Democrats and you end up with a Tory government." But Professor Curtice said: "Labour would need to lose around one in four of its voters before its majority would be threatened, not just one in 10."

He also rejected another claim by Labour - that if only one in 50 Labour voters in 80 marginal seats back the Liberal Democrats or abstain, there would be a Conservative government.

Professor Curtice replied: "If Labour lose 80 seats, then Tony Blair does indeed lose his majority with just 323 seats. But 80 extra Conservative seats leaves Michael Howard with just 245 seats, still 79 short of a majority.

A poll by ICM showed that, if people thought Mr Kennedy's party could win in their constituency, 39 per cent would vote for it, with 31 per cent backing Labour and 26 per cent backing the Tories.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

David Mills, husband of Tessa Jowell and brother-in-law of Barbara Mills ex-head of the Serious Fraud Office, is under criminal investigation by Italian magistrates for money laundering on behalf of Italy's PM Silvio Berlusconi.

Bernie Ecclestone allegedly achieved a change in government policy on tobacco advertising. Eccletone gave a donation to Blair's New Labour. Jowell was the health minister who changed Labour Party Policy on tobacco advertising. Jowell's husband David Mills was a director of one of Ecclestone's key companies.

Enron was one of the key backers of the New Labour takeover of the Labour Party. Enron accountants Arthur Anderson were New Labour's favorites when it came to getting the lucrative PFI (quasi-privatisation) deals which allegedly 'made a packet for New Labour henchmen'.

"Enron was used as a shell company to suck cash out of the US financial system. The cash was deposited in bogus companies in tax havens where it was untraceable, and then stolen by persons unknown."

The Independent on Sunday pollsters asked two questions: "Will you vote Liberal Democrat at the next election?" and "Would you vote Liberal Democrat if you thought they could win?"About 20% of people said 'Yes' to the first question, 38% said 'Yes' to the second. What happens when all the potential Liberal Democrat voters actually vote Liberal Democrat? The answer is: CHANGE.

In January 2005, George Churchill-Coleman, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said:

"I have a horrible feeling that we are sinking into a police state."

(The Guardian, January 28, 2005)

In an article in the Daily Mirror, 3 December 2002, John Pilger cited a former intelligence officer who described the government’s flood of terror warnings as "a softening up process" ahead of an attack on Iraq and "a lying game on a huge scale".

The central issue in the UK election should be:

The use of terror by the security services of various countries in order to keep the rich elite in power.

Sadly, most of the media and most of the political parties are silent on this issue.

Who are 'the rich elite'? They are the Arab billionaires, the Christian billionaires, the Jewish billionaires, the Chinese billionaires.... They are not all from one tribe.

One billionaire who used terror as a weapon was Suharto, and his security services have been trained by the Americans. His security services also have links to the Israelis.

Medialens points out that in the first three weeks of campaigning for the 2001 general election, the Communications Research Centre at Loughborough University found that there had been "little sign of real issues" in media coverage

Defence comprised 0.6 percent of reporting.

There was no mention of:

1. New Labour's "ethical foreign policy" deception

2. the non-existent "genocide" used as a pretext for Blair's bombing of Serbia

3. Blair's silence as East Timor burned

4. The siege and bombing of Iraq.

Senior UN diplomats had resigned in 1998 and 2000, describing New Labour's policy on Iraq as "genocidal".

Medialens quotes Gore Vidal :

"Remember that the country is governed by vast conglomerates, many now so internationalised that there is no way of taxing them, much less punishing them, for buying elections to the Congress so that their lawyers can get them ‘defence’ contracts while exempting them from taxation...

"When a ruling establishment will not let daylight in on their workings because they own the media as well as the permanent rental of most of Congress, judiciary and executive, that doesn’t leave much to talk about at election time except sex, the flag, the foetus and, in the good old days, Communism."

(Vidal, ‘New World Ordure,’ The Observer, January 25, 1998)

In 1996, John Pilger wrote: "to all but the trusting or cynical it must be dawning that the next Labour government is quite likely to be more reactionary, nastier and a greater threat to true democracy than its venal Tory predecessor."

(Pilger, New Statesman, October 11, 1996)

According to the Medialens writer: "The ‘choice‘, now, is between a right-wing, warmongering party of big business and a right-wing, warmongering party of big business. One real difference does remain, however - the leader of one of the parties is a war criminal responsible for major crimes against humanity."

Medialens reminds us that in January, George Churchill-Coleman, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said:

"I have a horrible feeling that we are sinking into a police state, and that's not good for anybody. We live in a democracy and we should police on those standards."(‘Britain 'sliding into police state',’ Alan Travis, Clare Dyer and Michael White, The Guardian, January 28, 2005)

John Pilger cited a former intelligence officer who described the government’s flood of terror warnings as "a softening up process" ahead of an attack on Iraq and "a lying game on a huge scale".(Pilger, ‘Lies, damned lies and government terror warnings,’ Daily Mirror, December 3, 2002)

According to Medialens, the Guardian/Observer website records dozens of mentions of articles containing the words 'Heathrow and threat' between November 2002 and February 2003. And yet reports mentioning a threat to the airport simply vanish after February 14 - the day Hans Blix presented a key report to the UN, and the day before the biggest anti-war protest march in British history.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

"We asked Edmonds if she would deny that laundered drug money linked to the 911 attacks found its way into recent House, Senate and Presidential campaign war-chests, according to what she heard in intelligence intercepts she was asked to translate.

Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower, in an interview with the Baltimore Sun, said:

"...this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it’s getting into somebody’s political campaign, and somebody’s lobbying. And people don’t want to be traced back to this money."

Edmonds said to Antiwar "...as for the politicians, what I can say is that when you start talking about huge amounts of money, certain elected officials become automatically involved. And there are different kinds of campaign contributions - legal and illegal, declared and undeclared."

Nick Mathiason, in the Observer, 27 March 2005, wrote about how the top people hide their wealth.

Rupert Murdoch, friend of Blair's Labour Party, has floated his family's £3.8 billion personal investment company in Bermuda - saving himself £522 million in taxes.

Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian-born, Labour-donor industrial magnate, is worth £13 billion and is the world's third richest man, according to Forbes. Under UK tax laws, he is exempt from paying a heavy tax bill because his primary residence is overseas.

The business empire of billionaire Philip Green is mostly held in the name of his wife, Tina, who lives in Monaco.

The Observer revealed that the world's richest people are hiding $11.5 trillion in tax havens.

The taxable income on $11.5tn could exceed $255bn.

These figures were worked out by Tax Justice Network, a collection of tax experts and economists.

Aid organisations believe that money that should be used for infrastructure is being hidden in tax havens by corrupt politicians and multinationals.

Former Indonesian dictator Suharto, who is supposed to be so mentally and physically ill that he can never be brought to trial for corruption or human rights abuses, has appeared in good health during a visit to a theme park.

Berita Kota daily said Suharto walked unaided for about 60 meters to enter a large hall at the Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park in Jakarta.

Private television network RCTI broadcast footage of a smiling Suharto (83) walking with a cane while accompanied by his three daughters.

After 'shaking hands, chatting animatedly and laughing with other guests', Suharto unveiled a statue of his wife. He later strolled across some of the bridges in the park.

When the park was built in 1971, there were big student protests, as poor people were evicted from their land to make way for the $25 million project. The military opened fire on the demonstrators, injuring at least four of them.

Germany-based anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has ranked Suharto as the world's most corrupt politician over the past two decades, claiming that his family amassed between $15 billion and $35 billion.

Rights activists say he was also one of the world’s most brutal dictators; after he was put into power, the CIA reportedly gave the Indonesian authorities the names of people to be murdered; up to 1 million people were slaughtered by right wing forces.

It has been claimed that Suharto was put into power by the CIA and its friends and removed from power by the CIA and its friends.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

The web site www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com - which has already attracted 350,000 visitors - takes a different approach from the normal opinion polls.

After being asked which party they currently back in Britain's May 5 poll, participants then field 23 questions about their view on subjects ranging from Iraq to tax, immigration and other issues.

Finally, they click their mouse on a button that asks: "Who should I vote for?" and the computer matches voters' responses to the parties which best articulate these views.The results can prove surprising.

According to data from Web site operator Thoughtplay, while 25 percent of people who took the test said beforehand they were Labour supporters, only 11 percent emerged as backing Blair's policies.

Similarly, 26 percent entered the main opposition Conservatives as their preferred choice, but only 16 percent of the test results came out as in favor of the party's stated views.

In contrast, the big winners were the Liberal Democrats, a smaller opposition group, with 36 percent of answers indicating support for the party, well above the original voting intentions.

The UK Independent newspaper reports that prominent Labour politician Brian Sedgemore, who is standing down as an MP, is urging people to vote for the Liberal Democrats in protest at Tony Blair's "lies" over Iraq.

Brian Sedgemore writes in the Independent about Blair's lust for power and about the end of Britain as a liberal country.

Sedgemore points out that a Labour government has twice tried to abolish trial by jury.

According to Sedgemore: "From there, it was a short step for Blair (but a huge step for the rest of us) to get suppliant backbench Labour MPs to vote for an unlawful war, the setting up of a gulag at Belmarsh for foreigners and deprivation of liberty through "control orders" and "pass laws" for British citizens."

Sedgemore suggests that Blair decided to go to war after meeting Bush on his Texas ranch in 2002. After that he lied to persuade the country to support him.

"The stomach-turning lies on Iraq were followed by the attempt to use the politics of fear to drive through Parliament a deeply authoritarian set of law and order measures," writes Sedgemore.

Sedgemore's decision to join the anti-war Liberal Democrats is not just about the war. It's also about top-up fees and privatising the health service.

Sedgemore describes Blair as shameless and writes of Blair: "He used to act at school and he uses that talent now; every time he speaks, for example, at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales you can hear someone saying, 'Cue broken voice, quivering lips, dropped shoulder, tear in left eye'"

A judge investigating vote-rigging in Birmingham's local elections ruled there was widespread postal vote fraud.

Judge Mawrey said evidence of "massive, systematic and organised fraud" in the campaign had made a mockery of the election and ruled that not less than 1,500 votes had been cast fraudulently in the city.

Accused of vote fraud were three representatives of the Bordesley Green ward, Shafaq Ahmed, Shah Jahan and Ayaz Khan and three Aston representatives, Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi.

Mr Mawrey ordered that none of the six councillors be allowed to stand for the vacant seats at the next election.

Psychic & Spirit Magazine had an article on 'Divination The Tarot And Quantum Physics', by Cilla Conway, on Mar 16, 2005.

Conway points out that in the world of Quantum Physics we find: "quantum probabilities and organized chaos ...

"a world where matter may exist and not exist at the same time, where our perception of all these phenomena can bring them into existence, or change them...

"Below all this chaos, there is an underlying unity: an energy or ‘field’ that exists throughout the universe....

"All matter in the universe can now be seen as interconnected by waves of energy. Matter itself is part of the same energy field – in other words there is no division between the material and the immaterial...

The 'field' "implies information exchange, as well as energy exchange, and could therefore provide instantaneous communication.

"The phenomena we call ... paranormal, such as telepathy, telekinesis,... and other oracular devices, foresight, intuition, and dreams, would just be part of this exchange, as we are part of The Field.

"As mystics have said for millennia, there is no separation. Equally important, this also corroborates the metaphysical tenet – that we create our own reality...

"Physics and mysticism are beginning to talk the same language: no longer are we considered to be a separate part of existence, nor is mind seen as separate from body. Some physicists even say that the cosmos is not only affected by consciousness, but is consciousness.

"As Lynne Taggart says, the physicists’ ‘work suggested a decentralized but unified intelligence that was far grander and more exquisite than Darwin or Newton had imagined, a process that was not random or chaotic, but intelligent and purposeful.’

"This gets close to saying that the human mind is an integral part of what we call deity – a super-conscious Creator."

Sunday, April 24, 2005

The legal advice given to the UK government by the Attorney General in the run-up to the Iraq war has been leaked.

The Mail on Sunday reports that Lord Goldsmith set out six reasons why the war could be considered to breach international laws.

The Mail on Sunday claims the six "caveats" were stripped from a summary of the advice published 10 days later on the eve of a crucial parliamentary debate on the war.

They reportedly included warnings that only the United Nations could judge whether Saddam Hussein had defied its order to disarm and that Mr Blair could not rely on the American position that the war was legal.

According to the Mail on Sunday, the 13 pages of legal advice warned that Blair could be in breach of international law for six reasons ranging from the lack of a second United Nations resolution to UN inspector Hans Blix's continuing search for weapons.

Robin Cook said he had resigned because he considered it wrong to go to war without a second UN resolution. 'What we know now is that the Attorney General appears to have agreed with me,' he said.

According to the legal advice:

1. A court might well rule that only the UN, not Blair, could decide whether or not Iraq had defied orders to disarm.

2. It was questionable that Britain could rely on UN resolution 1441 - warning of 'serious consequences' if Saddam Hussein flouted the UN ruling - as grounds for invasion; it would be safer to proceed with a second UN resolution.

3. It could be difficult to revive UN resolution 678, passed in 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait, as justification for the war. Goldsmith highlighted a report by Blix that Iraq was being more compliant.

The caveats were not mentioned in the statement Goldsmith published in the House of Lords, on 17 March.

Moussaoui had been attending a flight school. The instructor and a vice president of the flight school tried repeatedly to get the FBI to investigate Moussaoui. (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, New York Times December 22.)

The vice president of the flight school, who briefed Minnesota Congressmen James Oberstar and Martin Sabo, said it took four to six phone calls to the FBI to find an agent who would help.

Moussaoui was eventually detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service on visa charges.

Local FBI investigators in Minneapolis suspected Moussaoui of being a terrorist and soughtawarrant to search the hard drive of Moussaoui's home computer. This was rejected by higher-level officials in Washington, who claimed there was insufficient evidence to meet the legal requirements for the warrant.

In 1996, Abdul Hakim Murad testified in court that he worked for Al Qaeda and that he had trained at the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. FBI agents knew Moussaoui had attended the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma.

On August 26, FBI headquarters was told by French intelligence that Moussaoui had ties to the Al Qaeda organization and Osama bin Laden.

A special counterterrorism panel of the FBI and CIA concluded there was insufficient evidence that Moussaoui represented any threat, despite his refusal to answer questions and the French allegations. Moussaoui was not transferred from INS detention to FBI custody until after September 11.

Several of the September 11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, the alleged ringleader, were under direct surveillance by US agencies as suspected terrorists during 2000 and 2001.Yet they were allowed to travel freely into and out of the US and eventually carry out their plans.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Chris Floyd, in the Moscow Times 22 April 2005, wrote about war profiteering and state terrorism, Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and the BCCI affair.

According to Floyd: "Two George Bushes and Bill Clinton brokered massive backroom oil deals for Saddam."

"Chilean gun-runner Carlos Cardoen was a CIA frontman used by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush I to funnel cluster bombs and other weapons secretly to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War.

"At Reagan's direct order, Saddam received U.S. military intelligence, billions of dollars in credits and a steady supply of covert 'third-country' arms to sustain his war effort, even though the White House was fully aware of Saddam's "almost daily use" of illegal chemical weapons, The Washington Post reported.

"Later, Bush I, as president, would also mandate the sale of WMD material to Saddam, including anthrax - long after Saddam notoriously 'gassed his own people' at Halabja.

"As in the present UN scandal, Saddam paid for his covert cluster bombs with oil...

"Helping Saddam kill people with chemical gas was not the only reason why Reagan and Bush I aided their favorite dictator...

"In 1986, George Bush I visited the Middle East with a secret message to be passed to Saddam via Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: 'Drop more bombs on Iran's cities.'

"How do we know this? From the sworn testimony of Howard Teicher, the National Security Council official who accompanied Bush and wrote the official "talking points" for the trip. Ostensibly, Bush urged this mass killing of civilians as a strategy to halt Iran's gains at the front.

"But as The New Yorker reported - 13 years ago - there was another layer to this covert plot.

"A fierce aerial offensive by Saddam would force Iran to seek more spare parts for its U.S.-made planes and anti-aircraft weapons, inherited from the ousted Shah.

"Bush was already waist-deep in the Iran-Contra scam, which involved selling Tehran U.S. military goods through back channels, then funneling the secret profits to the Contras, the gang of right-wing insurgents and CIA-trained terrorists in Nicaragua. Congress had forbidden U.S. aid to the Contras, so Reagan and Bush used the mullahs (and Central American drug lords) to run their illegal terrorist war. More innocent deaths in Iran meant more backdoor cash for the Contras. A win-win situation!

"When Bush I became president, he clasped Saddam even closer, sending him billions in U.S.-backed 'agricultural credits' through BNL, an Italian bank tied up with BCCI - the international 'financial consortium' that was actually 'one of the largest criminal enterprises in history,' according to the U.S. Senate. BCCI laundered money and financed arms dealing, terrorism, smuggling and prostitution, while corrupting government officials worldwide with bribes and extortion.As Bush well knew, Saddam was using the BNL cash for arms, not food; indeed, that was the point of the exercise.

"When some honest U.S. officials threatened to unravel the BNL gun-running scam, Bush appointed Cardoen's own lawyer to a top Justice Department post -- overseeing the investigation of his former boss. Under heavy White House pressure, the case was quickly whittled down to the usual 'bad apple' underlings carrying out some minor fraud. But perhaps Papa Bush was just being fatherly.

"Earlier, another BCCI offshoot bank had bailed out one of Bush Junior's many business failures with $25 million in cash. That deal had been brokered by mysterious Arkansas tycoon Jackson Stephens, one of the Bush family's biggest campaign contributors. Curiously enough, Stephens was also a top moneyman for another leading politician: Bill Clinton.

"When Clinton took office, he obligingly deep-sixed the continuing probes into BCCI, Iraqgate and Iran-Contra. That's how the system really works."

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

On May 26th 2004, the Toronto Star reported a national poll showing that 63% of Canadians are convinced US leaders had 'prior knowledge' of the 9 11 attacks yet declined to act. There was no US coverage of this poll.

(madison.com is operated by Capital Newspapers, publishers of the Wisconsin State Journal, The Capital Times)

David Ray Griffin believes U.S. officials had some knowledge of 9 11 and possibly orchestrated the attacks.

Griffin's book is called "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11."

Griffin recently got a standing ovation from the people who packed his lecture in Wisconsin.

Griffin is a retired Christian theologian.

According to Griffin, Americans interpret9 11 in one of three ways:

1. It was a surprise attack by Islamic terrorists.

2. The Bush people knew the attacks were coming and let them happen. A Zogby poll taken last year indicated that almost half of the residents of New York City share this view.

3. The government orchestrated the attacks. Polls in Canada and Germany have found as many as 20 percent of those populations believe this.

In his follow-up book, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," Griffin examines the questions that he and others in the "9/11 Truth Movement" claim were not examined by the federal government's 9/11 Commission.

Evidence to support the theory that U.S. officials had at least had some foreknowledge of the attacks comes from David Schippers, the chief prosecutor for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, who reportedly received warnings from FBI agents about the attacks six weeks earlier, Griffin said.

Government officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, did not respond to the warnings, he added.

There was the extraordinarily high volume of "put options" purchased in the three days before the attacks. Investors betting that stock in United and American Airlines - the two airlines used in the attacks - would go down. There were also a suspiciously high number of put options for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, which occupied 22 stories of the World Trade Center.

"U.S. intelligence agencies monitor the market, partly to look for signs of impending attacks," Griffin said. "One wonders how information could be much more specific than this."

Griffin then made a case that government officials planned and executed the attacks.

The United States military neglected to send fighter jets to intercept the hijacked planes. Such interceptions usually occur within 10 to 20 minutes after the first signs of trouble and are routine, happening about 100 times a year, Griffin said.

It seems implausible, he said, that the Pentagon was struck by Flight 77, since it is "surely the best defended building on the planet." The U.S. military has the best radar systems in the world and "does not miss anything occurring in North American airspace," he added.

Griffin made a case that the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings was brought on by thousands of explosives placed throughout each of the buildings. They went straight down, at free-fall speed, as in controlled demolitions, and many people in the buildings reported that they heard or felt explosions, he added.

"High-rise steel-frame buildings have never - before or after 9/11- been caused to collapse by fire," he said.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

In Vanity Fair, 1999, John Cornwall wrote about Hitler's Pope, PIUS XII.

"Long-buried Vatican files reveal a new and shocking indictment of World War II's Pope Pius XII: that in pursuit of absolute power he helped Adolf Hitler destroy German Catholic political opposition, betrayed the Jews of Europe, and sealed a deeply cynical pact with a 20th-century devil."

In 1963 a play by German author named Rolf Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) described Pacelli as a ruthless cynic, interested more in the Vatican's stockholdings than in the fate of the Jews.

Vatican officials gave Cornwall access to secret material.

The evidence revealed that Pacelli had 'helped Hitler to power' and at the same time undermined Catholic resistance in Germany. It showed that he had 'implicitly denied and trivialized the Holocaust, despite having reliable knowledge of its true extent'.

"More than any other Vatican official of the century, he had promoted the modern ideology of autocratic papal control, the highly centralized, dictatorial authority he himself assumed on March 2, 1939, and maintained until his death in October 1958".

Hitler, who had his first big electoral success in September 1930, wanted a treaty with the Vatican similar to that obtained by Mussolini, which would lead to the disbanding of the German Center Party.

The Catholic Church in Germany was against Hitler. However the Vatican view, being promoted by Vatican official Eugenio Pacelli, seemed to be different.

Former German chancellor Brüning describes in his memoirs how Pacelli told him he should reach an understanding with the Nazis to 'form a right-wing administration' in order to help achieve a Reich Concordat favorable to the Vatican.

After Hitler came to power in January 1933, he made the concordat negotiations with Pacelli a priority.

"Hitler insisted that his signature on the concordat would depend on the Center Party's voting for the Enabling Act, the legislation that was to give him dictatorial powers. It was Kaas, chairman of the party but completely in thrall to Pacelli, who bullied the delegates into acceptance. Next, Hitler insisted on the 'voluntary' disbanding of the Center Party, the last truly parliamentary force in Germany. Again, Pacelli was the prime mover in this tragic Catholic surrender.

"The fact that the party voluntarily disbanded itself, rather than go down fighting, had a profound psychological effect, depriving Germany of the last democratic focus of potential noncompliance and resistance: In the political vacuum created by its surrender, Catholics in the millions joined the Nazi Party, believing that it had the support of the Pope. The German bishops capitulated to Pacelli's policy of centralization, and German Catholic democrats found themselves politically leaderless.

"On July 14, 1933, after the initialing of the treaty, the Cabinet minutes record Hitler as saying that the concordat had created an atmosphere of confidence that would be "especially significant in the struggle against international Jewry." He was claiming that the Catholic Church had publicly given its blessing, at home and abroad, to the policies of National Socialism, including its anti-Semitic stand. At the same time, under the terms of the concordat, Catholic criticism of acts deemed political by the Nazis, could now be regarded as "foreign interference."

"The concordat immediately drew the German church into complicity with the Nazis. Even as Pacelli was granted special advantages in the concordat for German Catholic education, Hitler was trampling on the educational rights of Jews throughout the country. At the same time, Catholic priests were being drawn into Nazi collaboration with the attestation bureaucracy, which established Jewish ancestry.

"As Nazi anti-Semitism mounted in Germany during the 1930's, Pacelli failed to complain, even on behalf of Jews who had become Catholics, acknowledging that the matter was a matter of German internal policy.

"In 1937, Pius XI issued an encyclical, written under Pacelli's direction, called Mit Brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety), and it was a forthright statement of the plight of the church in Germany. But there was no explicit condemnation of anti-Semitism, even in relation to Jews who had converted to Catholicism.

"On February 10, 1939, Pius XI died, at the age of 81. Pacelli, then 63, was elected Pope by the College of Cardinals in just three ballots, on March 2. He was crowned on March 12, on the eve of Hitler's march into Prague. Between his election and his coronation he held a crucial meeting with the German cardinals. Keen to affirm Hitler publicly, he showed them a letter of good wishes which began, 'To the Illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler.'

"He was going to maintain normal diplomatic relations with Hitler. The following month, at Pacelli's express wish, Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the Berlin nuncio, hosted a gala reception in honor of Hitler's 50th birthday. A birthday greeting to the Führer from the bishops of Germany would become an annual tradition until the war's end.

"Pacelli continued to seek to appease Hitler by attempting to persuade the Poles to make concessions over Germany's territorial claims. After Hitler's invasion of Poland, on September 1, 1939, he declined to condemn Germany, to the bafflement of the Allies."

In November 1939, Pacelli became involved in a plot to depose Hitler.The plot centered on a group of anti-Nazi generals.

Pius XII agreed to act as go-between for the plotters and the Allies. As it happened, leaders in London dragged their feet, and the plotters eventually fell silent.

"Pacelli's first wartime act of reticence in failing to speak out against Fascist brutality occurred in the summer of 1941, following Hitler's invasion of Yugoslavia and the formation of the Catholic and Fascist state of Croatia.

"In a wave of appalling ethnic cleansing, the Croat Fascist separatists, known as the Ustashe, under the leadership of Ante Pavelic, the Croat Führer, embarked on a campaign of enforced conversions, deportations, and mass extermination targeting a population of 2.2 million Serb Orthodox Christians and a smaller number of Jews and Gypsies.

"According to the Italian writer Carlo Falconi, as early as April, in a typical act of atrocity, a band of Ustashe had rounded up 331 Serbs. The victims were forced to dig their own graves before being hacked to death with axes. The local priest was forced to recite the prayers for the dying while his son was chopped to pieces before his eyes. Then the priest was tortured. His hair and beard were torn off, his eves were gouged out. Finally he was skinned alive.

"The very next month Pacelli greeted Pavelic at the Vatican.

"Throughout the war, the Croat atrocities continued By the most recent scholarly reckoning. 487,000 Orthodox Serbs and 27,000 Gypsies were massacred; in addition, approximately 30,000 out of a population of 45,000 Jews were killed.

"Despite a close relationship between the Ustashe regime and the Catholic bishops, and a constant flow of information about the massacres, Pacelli said and did nothing.

"In fact, he continued to extend warm wishes to the Ustashe leadership.

"According to emperors-clothes.com: the Catholic Church, controlled the Independent State of Croatia. At one point it was in fact directly run by Archbishop Stepinac who answered to Pius XII. Stepinac has, in turn, been beatified."

Pacelli came to learn of the Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews of Europe shortly after they were laid in January 1942. The deportations to the death camps had begun in December 1941 and would continue through 1944.

Apart from an intervention in the case of Slovakia, where the president was Monsignor Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest, no papal initiatives resulted.

In mid 1942, the London Daily Telegraph announced that more than a million Jews had been killed in Europe and that it was the aim of the Nazis "to wipe the race from the European continent." The British, American, and Brazilian representatives to the Vatican tried to persuade Pacelli to speak out against the Nazi atrocities. But still he said nothing.

"On December 24, 1942, having made draft after draft, Pacelli at last said something : 'Humanity owes this vow to those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality and race, are marked for death or gradual extinction.'

"That was the strongest public denunciation of the Final Solution that Pacelli would make in the whole course of the war. He might have been referring to many categories of victims at the hands of various belligerents in the conflict."

The evidence Cornwall gathered 'shows that Pacelli saw the Jews as alien and undeserving of his respect and compassion'.

The documents allegedly show that:1. Pacelli had nourished a striking antipathy toward the Jews as early as 1917 in Germany.2. From the end of the First World War to the lost encyclical of 1938, Pacelli betrayed a fear and contempt of Judaism based on his belief that the Jews were behind the Bolshevik plot to destroy Christendom.3. Pacelli acknowledged to representatives of the Third Reich that the regime's anti-Semitic policies were a matter of Germany's internal politics.4. Pacelli failed to sanction protest by German Catholic bishops against anti-Semitism, and he did not attempt to intervene in the process by which Catholic clergy collaborated in racial certification to identify Jews.5. After Pius XI's Mit Brennender Sorge, denouncing the Nazi regime (although not by name), Pacelli attempted to mitigate the effect of the encyclical by giving private diplomatic reassurances to Berlin despite his awareness of widespread Nazi persecution of Jews.6. Pacelli was convinced that the Jews had brought misfortune on their own heads: intervention on their behalf could only draw the church into alliances with forces inimical to Catholicism.

"On October 16, 1943, SS troops entered the Roman ghetto area and rounded up more than 1,000 Jews, imprisoning them in the very shadow of the Vatican.

"On the morning of the roundup, which had been prompted by AdoIf Eichmann, who was in charge of the organization of the Final Solution from his headquarters in Berlin, the German ambassador in Rome pleaded with the Vatican to issue a public protest. By this stage of the war, Mussolini had been deposed and rescued by AdoIf Hitler to run the puppet regime in the North of Italy. The German authorities in Rome, both diplomats and military commanders, fearing a backlash of the Italian populace, hoped that an immediate and vigorous papal denunciation might stop the SS in their tracks and prevent further arrests. Pacelli refused. In the end, the German diplomats drafted a letter of protest on the Pope's behalf and prevailed on a resident German bishop to sign it for Berlin's benefit. Meanwhile, the deportation of the imprisoned Jews went ahead on October 18."

Pacelli was concerned that a protest by him would benefit only the Communists.

"What of the deported Jews? Five days after the train had set off from the Tiburtina station in Rome, an estimated 1,060 had been gassed at Auschwitz and Birkenau - 149 men and 47 women were detained for slave labor, but only 15 survived the war, and only one of those was a woman, Settimia Spizzichino, who had served as a human guinea pig of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi medical doctor who performed atrocious experiments on human victims. After the liberation, she was found alive in a heap of corpses."

Pacelli appeared unwilling to help the Jews of Rome rounded up on October 16.

To Cornwall's knowledge, there is no record of a single public papal prayer, lit votive candle, psalm, lamentation, or Mass celebrated in solidarity with the Jews of Rome either during their terrible ordeal or after their deaths.

"On learning of the death of AdoIf Hitler, Archbishop Adolf Bertram of Berlin ordered all the priests of his archdiocese "to hold a solemn Requiem in memory of the Führer."

"There were Jews who gave Pacelli the benefit of the doubt. On Thursday, November 29, 1945, Pacelli met 80 representatives of Jewish refugees who expressed their thanks "for his generosity toward those persecuted during the Nazi-Fascist period." Pacelli did issue a directive that enclosed religious houses in Rome should take in Jews hiding from the SS.

Settimia Spizzichino, the sole Roman Jewish woman survivor from the death camps, in a BBC interview in 1995, said: "I came back from Auschwitz on my own. . I lost my mother, two sisters and one brother. Pius XII could have warned us about what was going to happen. We might have escaped from Rome and joined the partisans. He played right into the Germans' hands. It all happened right under his nose. But he was an anti-Semitic pope, a pro-German pope. He didn't take a single risk. And when they say the Pope is like Jesus Christ, it is not true. He did not save a single child."

It was recently revealed (Robin Ramsay’s The Rise of New Labour) that when Blair became a candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party in 1994, Gideon Meir, a senior official at the Israeli Embassy in London, introduced him to Michael Levy (an extremely wealthy Jewish businessmen).

Levy agreed to help Blair to become leader of the party.

Levy, with the help of four other Jewish businessmen (Sir Emmanuel Kaye, Sir Trevor Chinn, Maurice Hatter, and David Goldman) provided Blair with £7m.

This paid for his campaign plus the running of his private office. This money allowed Blair to become independent of Labour Party funding.

Adam Curtis, who made the BBC documentary 'Power of Nightmares', won the best factual series award and used his acceptance speech to criticise news reports of last week's ricin trial.

His documentary suggested that right wing forces were using fear as a way of controlling people.

According to Curtis: "The reports of the ricin trial last week show that this is still a problem. The stories were distorted, exaggerated or completely fabricated. I know because I was in the courtroom."

Much of Britain's mainstream media, including the BBC, apparently censored the remarks by Curtis.

Monday, April 18, 2005

Dr. D. Ewen Cameron was the former head of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations.

The CIA’s Allen Dulles gave millions of dollars to organizations headed by Cameron.

Experimentations were conducted at several locations in Montreal, mostly at McGill University, St Mary’s Hospital and Allan Memorial Institute.

Cameron used technique of “psychic driving,” by which unsuspecting patients were kept in a drug induced coma for several weeks and given electroshocks, while electronic helmets were strapped to their heads and repetitive auditory messages were transmitted at variable speeds.

Many of those exploited were abused children from the Roman Catholic orphanage system.

According to the BBC: "He was a Scottish doctor whose burning ambition was to be a scientific legend. Dr Ewen Cameron, a graduate of Glasgow University, became one of the most eminent psychiatrists in the world. His work in Canada in the 1950s was radical and groundbreaking but now some of his patients are finally receiving compensation... Cameron subjected his unsuspecting patients to massive electric shocks and a cocktail of powerful drugs in a "brainwashing" programme funded by the CIA."

Monarch Program mind-control survivors claim to have been used as slaves by certain intelligence agencies and top-ranking politicians.

Project Monarch is part of the CIA's Project MK Ultra which is about mind control.

The original idea for this project came from research carried out by top SS German Nazi scientists (1927-1941) .The leader of this research was Himmler.

Project MK Ultra was exposed in 1970 due to law suits filed by Canadian survivors and/or their surviving families.

These survivors received the cooperation of Canadian Intelligence individuals and others who uncovered one of the CIA's original mind control research mental health facilities based in Montreal. The CIA and Canadian government settled the lawsuits out of court.

Josef Mengele, known as "the Angel of Death", was one of the approximately 900 military scientists and medical researchers secretly smuggled into the United States after World War II.

Dr Ewen Cameron's “depatterning” and “psychic driving” destroyed a patient’s personality by repeated shocks up to forty times the intensity considered safe.

In the 1950s, the CIA paid Cameron $69,000 to do this as part of their mind control operation code-named MK-ULTRA.

John Marks, author of The Search For The Manchurian Candidate, tells us: “The frequent screams of patients (usually women) that echoed through the hospital did not deter Cameron or most of his associates in their attempts to ‘depattern’ their subjects completely.

Jakartass points out that Asian and African leaders will be meeting in Jakarta and Bandung for a summit on Apr. 22 and Apr. 23, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Asia-Africa Conference.

"With Indonesia's volcanoes stirring in a domino effect following the movements of the tectonic plates in the past 3 months, there are fears about the 2,076-meter Mount Tangkuban Perahu, which overlooks Bandung and has been spewing out white ash, thick smoke and increased levels of hydrogen sulfide gas."

Mary Riddel, writing in the Observer about the Ricin trial, reminds us about the story of Auntie Annie's 'bomb factory'.

According to the police, Annie Maguire taught her small children how to make bombs in her Kilburn home.

Mrs Maguire and two of her sons were jailed. Her younger children were farmed out. Her brother-in-law, Giuseppe Conlon, died in prison, of emphysema and despair.

More than 25 years later, Tony Blair apologised publicly to the Maguire seven for one of the gravest miscarriages of justice of the last century.

There was no bomb factory and no plot.

Last week, Bourgass was convicted of conspiring to cause a public nuisance.

There was no ricin.

There was no al-Qaeda recipe, only a recipe apparently invented by a white American Christian survivalist and downloaded from the internet.

According to Mary Riddel, "Tony Blair, David Blunkett, Colin Powell and senior police officers all used the arrests to illustrate the existence of a new breed of Islamist super-terrorist. A criminal prosecution was exploited to fit a political agenda. A war was justified and civil liberties imperilled by the ricin stash that never was."

"The affair of the sham ricin casts a long shadow over the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the credulous sensationalists of the media and, most of all, over politicians."

~~~

Simon Jenkins Times, April 15, in The Times:

"Bourgass, an illegal immigrant from Algeria, was found in possession of ...recipes for ricin... copied from a 1980s Palo Alto website in California ... It had nothing to do with al-Qaida

"This man appears to have been the miserable detritus of a North African dictatorship....

"As for his eight supposed co-conspirators.... the crown never established them as terrorists, let alone al-Qaida. The trial, initiated in the run-up to the Iraq war, was heavily political."

In the Independent on Sunday, Severin Carrell and Raymond Whitaker report on Ricin: The Plot that never was.

The Ricin plot story was revealed before the invasion of Iraq.

But there was no ricin - a fact suppressed for more than two years.

There was no terrorist cell, just one deluded and dangerous man who killed a police officer during a bungled immigration raid.

No al-Qa'ida plot ever materialised.

According to the Independent on Sunday, "A terrorism trial which was spun from start to finish, abetted by many senior elements of the security establishment and much hysterical coverage in the media, is still being manipulated, regardless of the evidence in court."

"The 'ricin plot' was used before the Iraq war by Tony Blair as evidence of the danger from weapons of mass destruction, and by Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, before the UN Security Council as proof that Iraq was aiding al-Qa'ida terrorism."

Claims against Bourgass - that he had military training in Afghanistan and was linked to al-Qa'ida, that he planned to smear poisons on car door handles in London's Holloway Road - came from Mohammed Meguerba (who may have links to the police and security services)

When British investigators went to Algeria and asked Meguerba to repeat his claims, defence lawyers point out, he withdrew most of them.

The jury refused to convict Bourgass of conspiracy to commit acts of Islamist terrorism by killing innocent civilians.

Professor Alistair Hay, one of Britain's foremost authorities on toxins, was scathing about Meguerba's allegations that ricin would be smeared on door handles. Ricin, he said, had to be injected straight into a victim to be a reliable weapon.

Professor Hay told The Independent on Sunday, "The claims made before the trial about this major ricin plot were very, very questionable".

On 7 January 2003 - the same day that two cabinet ministers claimed ricin had been found in north London - Porton scientists had realised there was no ricin there at all.

Defence lawyers, however, believe ministers knew at an early stage that the claimed ricin find was wrong.

Gareth Peirce, the human rights lawyer who acted for three of the acquitted men, claims that as ministers built up the fear of terrorist attack on Britain and prepared the public for the invasion of Iraq, the Government twice allowed largely unfounded scare stories to dominate the headlines - the ricin conspiracy and the alleged "poison gas" attack on the London Underground.The alleged plot to target the Tube first appeared in The Sunday Times.

In fact, no such plot had been discovered.

As for Meguerba: 'there was no signed or recorded confession, just a memo or briefing drafted by Algerian security police which was given to the British'. Meguerba's story contained so many contradictions that Nigel Sweeney QC, the chief prosecution barrister in the Old Bailey trial, refused repeated requests by defence lawyers to allow him to give evidence.

“In spite of his age, Ratzinger has recently jumped to the top of the list of candidates,” according to Vatican watcher, Sandro Magister, in L’Espresso magazine recently.

As a young man, Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth in Bavaria, and was drafted into the Wehrmacht, the Nazi army.

He ended up in an Allied POW camp in 1945

In his early years in office, Ratzinger moved to stamp out liberation theology

Ratzinger is the author of a May 2001 letter to bishops stating that the “Crimine solicitationies” law (regarding strict secrecy in sex abuse cases) is still in effect.

It referred back to a 40 year old church document:

The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of ’strictest’ secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.

They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to ‘be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.’

[…] Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases ‘in the most secretive way… restrained by a perpetual silence… and everyone… is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office… under the penalty of excommunication’.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

"In recent years, firm evidence has begun to emerge from Algerian military sources and leading academics that the dreaded armed Islamic group, the GIA, has been, perhaps from the outset..., a dummy, or "screen" organisation managed by French/Algerian counter-intelligence."

The Guardian has obtained details of the testimony given by Meguerba which put his credibility in question.

In one account he denied being involved in any ricin plot.

Some accounts say Bourgass downloaded a ricin recipe from the internet.

At one point Meguerba claims a man at Finsbury Park mosque in north London, whom he names, gave him the ricin recipe to photocopy. Later, he said it was Bourgass who gave him the poison recipes.

Lawyers for the accused say Meguerba was not only a police informant but was also an instigator of the conspiracy.

No ricin was found, and tests by government scientists found that none had been produced.The most significant British terrorism trial since the attacks on America in 2001 ended with eight people being acquitted of conspiracy to murder and the jury deadlocked on the ninth, Bourgass.

While being interviewed by British officers, Mr Meguerba said of his co-conspirator: "I did not say he wanted to kill people."

"The details of French/Algerian collusion with the GIA are even more disturbing. It is not simply that Algerian death squads would impersonate the GIA and carry out massacres or create local militias – the so-called Patriotes – to do likewise. In recent years, firm evidence has begun to emerge from Algerian military sources and leading academics that the dreaded GIA has been – perhaps from the outset and certainly under Zitouni's bloody leadership – a dummy, or "screen" organisation managed by French/Algerian counter-intelligence.

Where was the terrorist threat in fact coming from, Le Monde asked rhetorically in November 2002, during its preview of a 90-minute Canal+ television documentary on the Metro bombings, and then cited the right-wing MP and former French counter-intelligence chief Alain Marsaud in reply. "State terrorism uses screen organisations," Marsaud said. "In this case [the GIA] a screen organisation in the hands of the Algerian security services … it was a screen to hold France hostage."

Two recent books by former Algerian military officers have given chapter and verse about the "turning" of the GIA. Last year, the feared Algerian general Khaled Nezzar sued one of the authors (Habib Souaida) in a Paris court for libel – and lost, largely due to compelling testimony by the star witness, the former Algerian colonel Mohammed Samraoui."

Friday, April 15, 2005

Macedonian police gunned down seven innocent Pakistani immigrants, then claimed they were terrorists, in a killing staged to show they were participating in the US-led war on terror, authorities said....

1. James I's Protestant spymaster, Robert Cecil, was the brains behind the Gunpowder Plot.

2. Some of the Gunpowder plotters were working for Cecil.

The story goes that Cecil manufactured the plot in an attempt to discredit the Catholic cause.

In the climate of fear following the Gunpowder Plot, Cecil and his supporters were able to pass more anti-Catholic laws and to make more money from fines on Catholics. Cecil was in a position to destroy Catholic rivals, such as the Earl of Northumberland, and had an opportunity to seize Catholic lands.

The official story of the gunpowder plot does not make sense. The 'confessions' were obtained under torture.

Why would the Catholic plotters have wanted to blow up parliament when it housed not only Protestants but also all the country's leading Catholics?

Elizabeth, James' protestant daughter, was was due to take over, if the plotters succeeded. Why would the Catholic plotters want Elizabeth on the throne?

The government had a monopoly on gunpowder and it was stored in places like the Tower of London. How did the conspirators get hold of 36 barrels of gunpowder without drawing attention to themselves?

How was the gunpowder moved across London from the Tower of London to Westminster (at least two miles distant) without anyone seeing it? The River Thames would not have been used as it could have lead to the gunpowder becoming damp and useless. Thirty six barrels would have been a sizeable quantity to move without causing suspicion.

Why were men who were known to be Catholics allowed to rent out a house so near to the Houses of Parliament?

How did they move 36 barrels from that house to the cellar of the Houses of Parliament without anyone noticing?

Why, for the first time in history, was there a search of Parliament's cellars that conveniently found Guy Fawkes.

Why was the soldier who killed Catesby and Percy at Holbeech House in the Midlands, given such a large pension for life (10p a day for life) when their arrest and torture was more desirable so that the names of any other conspirators might be found out?

Kamel Bourgas had been previously convicted of murder of a British policeman in an unpublicized trial.

Two days after the January 5th search of the Wood Green "poison cell" flat, and well before the outbreak of war with Iraq, the chief scientist advising British anti-terrorism authorities, Martin Pearce found that there was no trace of ricin at the flat.

However, an employee at Porton Down claimed, wrongly, that ricin had indeed been detected.

At the time of Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, experts within the UK government surely knew that no ricin had been recovered.

The Raid:

British anti-terrorist branch men swooped down on suspected terrorists in the north and east of London in September of 2002 and January of 2003.

Several suspected terrorists were arrested. One at Wood Green, others connected to a raid at the Finsbury Park mosque and one, Kamel Bourgas, a week later, in Manchester. Bourgas stabbed and killed a police officer in the Manchester raid. At the apartment in Wood Green - a "residue of ricin" was said to have been found. "A presumed al-Qaeda terror lab had been shut down."

The alleged existence of ricin and "the UK poison cell" in January 2003 played a part of Colin Powell's presentation as an excuse for war against Iraq.

Hundreds of news articles appeared on the Wood Green terrorists. Perhaps some of these men had been connected with terrorists training in the Pankisi gorge. Maybe the ricin was going to be used in a subway attack.

GlobalSecurity learnt that none of this was true. There was no ricin. And no other poisons were detected. No capability was exhibited to be in the hands of the defendants.

The findings at the flat at Wood Green:

GlobalSecurity.Org lists the findings and materials found at the Wood Green flat.These included:

A coffee grinder. It did contain a bit of brown powder. The defendants apparently drank coffee.

In fact, no traces of biological or chemical weapons were detected in the apartment.

Martin Pearce, the Porton Down scientist who accompanied the anti-terrorism team on the Wood Green raid noted items of potential interest to include toiletries...

The "UK poison cell" defendants were on trial for six months. There were 90 arrests. Nine people were charged and none have been convicted. Kamel Bourgas was justifiably convicted of a murder of a police officer during the raid in which he was taken into custody.

There was no UK poison cell linked to al Qaida or Muhamad al Zarqawi. There was no ricin with which to poison London. There was no one who even knew how to purify ricin.

Duncan Campbell, expert witness and scientist for the defense in the trial, helped put together the globalsecurity report.

Kamel Bourgass has been convicted of a plot to spread ricin and other poisons on the streets of Britain. A number of other men were cleared last week of taking part in a conspiracy. A second trial has been abandoned.

Police raided a flat in a north London suburb on 5 January 2003.

Soon the newspapers were full of stories about ricin.

There was mention of al-Qaeda.

A police officer was stabbed to death during a raid on a flat in Manchester a few days later.

In February 2003 Colin Powell said: "When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the disruption of the cell."

According to the BBC: "The situation was never as black-and-white as those initial media reports suggested."

No ricin was actually found at the flat in 352B High Road or at any of the defendants' other addresses.

Police reportedly found, in another flat in north London, a CD-Rom showing how to make bombs "in the furtherance of the jihad".

Despite rumours there was no evidence of a plot to poison Tube passengers.

It was claimed that between January 2002 and the date of their arrest Bourgass and other north Africans were involved in a conspiracy.

One north African, Mohamed Meguerba, jumped bail and allegedly went back to Algeria.

Defence lawyers claimed throughout the trial that Meguerba was a police informant.

Marguerite Russell, representing David Khalef, told the jury they were bound to be influenced by the "daily diet of terrorism, asylum-seekers and immigration" which had been on TV, radio and in the newspapers in the last two years.

She said her client worked in a pork factory, which suggested he was not an extreme Islamic fundamentalist.

"The prosecution haven't called one word of evidence about Khalef or his lifestyle to suggest he is the kind of man who would take part in this conspiracy.

MIKE WHITNEY, in counterpunch, has recently written about the coming Economic Tsunami

"If the world's central bankers accumulate fewer dollars, the result would be an unrelenting American need to borrow in the face of an ever weaker dollar - a recipe for higher interest rates and higher prices. The economic repercussions could unfold gradually, resulting in a long, slow decline in living standards. Or there could be a quick unraveling, with the hallmarks of an uncontrolled fiscal crisis."New York Times editorial 4-2-05

According to Whitney, "the economic tsunami planned by the Bush administration is probably only months away."

In just 5 years the national debt has increased by nearly 3 trillion dollars.The dollar has fallen 38% since Bush took office.

Laws have been passed (Patriot Act, Intelligence Reform Bill, Homeland Security Bill, National ID, Passport requirements etc) which can be used to control people 'when the economy takes its inevitable nosedive'.

Acording to Whitney, Iran is to bombed in June, and this is an added complication.

Whitnet argues that the USA has been intentionally plundered and will eventually wind up in the hands of its creditors.

This same scheme has been carried out repeatedly by the IMF and World Bank throughout the world; Argentina being the last example.

Bankruptcy will allow public assets and resources to be handed over tofinancial elites /cronies.

Whitney points out that Paul Wolfowitz of the World Bank may supervise the process.

"When the time comes for the next attack - and as I've said before I think it will be Syria and Lebanon rather than Iran - there will be a 'terrorist' attack against a top American official - probably someone without the requisite subservient attitude towards Israel - which will immediately be blamed by the Bush Administration on "(obviously) Iranian-supported terrorists" (substitute 'Syrian-supported' if the neocon plan is to go after Syria). Of course, the attack could also be against Americans generally, following the model of September 11. In any event, it is impossible to conceive that it would be politically possible for Bush to set out on another illegal attack without opening another can of whoop ass on the American people. Sadly, another quick 'terrorist' attack, with an equally quick FBI report that it was the work of (obviously) Iranian-supported terrorists, would work just as well as September 11 worked (September 11 as Pearl, or Perle, Harbor), and anyone who questions the obviousness of it will be labeled a crazy conspiracy theorist."

The Sun has decided to back Blair, citing the prime minister's bravery over the Iraq war.

Rupert Murdoch has not consummated his flirtation with Michael Howard. No Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher has been wooed in the same way as Mr Howard, who was invited to address the News Corporation annual jamboree in Cancun, Mexico.

According to radioislam.org: "Murdoch's mother E J Greene is from a Jewish family. Murdoch was able to build up his media empire with the financial backing of Jewish billionaires such as Oppenheimer (diamond cartel billionaire) and Rothschild (banking billionaire."